'DOWN AND OUT' MISSES AS SATIRE

Teen-age son Max likes to wear lipstick. College student daughter Jenny is dating a drug addict. Dad just bought a white Rolls-Royce and feels guilty; Mom seeks spiritual salvation with the help of a turbaned guru. Just your typical rich American family in the acquisitive, messed-up mid-1980s, according to Paul Mazursky.

The latest from this astute chronicler of cultural swings and lapses is Down and Out in Beverly Hills. He has cast it well, chiefly with Richard Dreyfuss and Bette Midler as wealthy couple Dave and Barbara Whiteman. But Mazursky doesn't direct or write it with the same flair he showed in An Unmarried Woman and Blume in Love.

Their lives are disrupted when a big bearded bum (Nick Nolte) tries to drown himself in their swimming pool. Dave rescues the poor guy, who's twice his size. In a gesture of humanitarianism that Barbara disdains, he invites the bum, named Jerry, to stay with them until he gets on his feet.

Who will change whom in the long run and what will each man have to teach the other? That's the intrigue of Down and Out in Beverly Hills, a title applicable to any of the main characters. Conspicuous consumption and domestic luxury get to Jerry after a while; his transition is scant more than a haircut and clothes shopping trip away.

Yet when Jerry cleans himself up and starts taking over, it doesn't quite ring true. Neither does the scene in which Dave goes slumming with Jerry's scruffy pals on the beach. In truth neither man seems much committed to anything.

Jean Renoir's humanist comedy Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932) inspired the screenplay by Mazursky and Leon Capetanos. Unhappily, it is missing the warmth of the original.

Worse, Mazursky seems to have misplaced his gift for satirizing mores and trends. It's hard to tell if he wants to mock or celebrate the way the Whitemans behave. There's nothing in the least outrageous about various sexual betrayals or the sexual coming out of one character. It's just ho-hum. When everyone at a formal party jumps in the swimming pool with their clothes on, the movie looks for all the world like a throwback to another decade.

At best, Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a pleasantry, a trifle with a few laughs. Dreyfuss has the most interesting performance in a role that Jack Lemmon might have played 15 years ago. He conveys a sense of self-doubt even as he's revelling in the moment -- cheating on his wife, boozing with bums. You get the feeling that underneath the well-groomed exterior of this hanger manufacturer is a wild man itching to cut loose.

Bette Midler is also consistently fun to watch. Her role as the shopping-mad matron for whom things must be just so is utterly frivolous and silly, but not dumb.

More could have been done by Nick Nolte with the pivotal role of Jerry, around whom the others are satellites. By the confusing end of the movie, it's a moot point as to what he was trying to accomplish and what his final choice means.

By the way, Down and Out in Beverly Hills is the first R-rated film to be made by Walt Disney Productions (under the banner of Touchstone Films). The rating is warranted by two scenes of jokey sex. The Disney stamp is indisputable from countless reaction shots by a lively pooch. The lucky dog also has the movie's funniest scenes.

DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS

A wealthy couple's home life changes when they invite a bum to stay with them.